The May 25 killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer and the protests that followed reminded many in Israel of similar cases right here in the Middle East. The most prominent ot these in Israel was the killing of Solomon Tekah by a policeman in July 2019. The official investigation of that event has yet to be completed. At the time, Mazal Mualem wrote in Al-Monitor that the protest that erupted after Tekah’s funeral was one of the most violent that Israel has seen since the country was founded. It gave voice to the deep crisis in trust between a marginalized group in Israeli society and the various law enforcement agencies, chief among them the police and its Internal Affairs division. For Israelis of Ethiopian origin, these two groups personify the institutionalized racism they face because of the color of their skin.
Maybe that's why the first step taken by Deputy Minister of Public Security Gadi Yevarkan (Likud), himself the child of Ethiopian immigrants, was to propose legislation to dismantle Internal Affairs and replace it with a new agency under the auspices of the Justice Ministry. Headed by a judge, that body would have much broader powers than the current Internal Affairs division now wields. Upon submitting his proposed legislation, Yevarkan said that policemen who fail to follow the law should be severely punished.
